Giveaway and another year…going, going….

Almost gone! First, a giveaway and the time is almost gone! I have a sweet little spring hipster (see the fabric selection in the previous post) waiting to find a new home. Post a comment or send me an email and we’ll put your name in a hat for this little bag. The winner will get their bag shipped out to them next week. SO COMMENT NOW!!

OK…and so, another year has come and gone. I celebrated a birthday last week and I’m crazy crepe papernot exactly thrilled at the aspect of moving ever so closer to…gulp, 40. I mean, really, 40?! I still have a few years left but it’s out there, looming ahead and just waiting to snatch me up into its clutches. So when I woke up to yet another birthday this week, I have to say I was not feeling all that chipper about the day.

I went off to work and sat in my office in silence most of the day. Our students are off on Spring Break and so most of them are out sunning on a beach somewhere or hiking in the mountains. Nothing exciting about the day. Just an ordinary day. But wait…

I knew something was up when I called my sister on my commute home. She said, as we were about to sign off, “have fun tonight with everything”. What everything? What are you talking about? She says, “oh, I don’t know.” I asked her, what do you know – did you call my house? She said, I might have called your house. Just have fun, ok. Smiling to myself, I pull down our street and promptly lose cell connection (you’ve heard me groan before about all of this right? We have no internet, no cable and very intermittent cell connection from our house. Drives me nuts!).

I pull up to our driveway and I wonder…why has someone marked the trees? They had tape around them – or so I thought. When I actually pulled in I realize that my entire driveway has crepe paper strewn from tree to tree that goes back and forth blocking the entire length of the driveway. My twins are standing in the doorway yelling “drive through it! drive through it!” and jumping up and down laughing and screaming as I drive slowly through all of the paper and get to a garage that is equally covered! Too fun!

I enter into our house – same thing! A combination of crepe paper, christmas garland, easter decorations and birthday balloons everywhere. They had a delicious lasagna dinner waiting for me compliments of my MIL, and a cake that had dots (?), yes those are my favorite polka dots on there, and my “birdies” that I applique on various things. The girls did the design work and I think it was quite clever. They presented me with a new hummingbird feeder, garden gloves, a bracelet and earrings, and my hubby gave me a dozen roses. I have to say, my blah, blah, blah birthday turned out to be the best ever. I “heart” my family – especially my husband. All that effort meant a TON to me…thanks.

Also this week – just pure random-ness here – Sprouts hair has been wild. Wild!Crazy! She’s been sporting this crazy hair all week and I keep wetting it down and it pops back up! Too funny. But with her hair getting longer I can finally really use the barrettes I bought from Suann at Bows and Blossoms. They stay put – well – when she isn’t pulling it out – and I love this one with her initial on it. Suann makes uber cute things, super great price and SUPER fast shipping. Check out her site here because she has some of the cutest new things for Spring.Go Bucks bow

Coming up next – bunny tutorial!

A little something you can handstitch for the easter baskets or decorate your table with or just love on! Fun!

Ciao! xo, Trish

{The Gardener and his peas}

{The season has begun.}Planting the Garden

About a week ago, the husband started getting the soil ready for planting.  He read up on the new veggies he was going to plant.  Thought about our little vegetarian we are feeding currently – the baby and has begun the process of providing loads of organics for our family.

Carrots, potatoes, beets, onions, and more and of course PEAS.  My girls never even let me cook them…the sugar snaps get eaten raw mostly.  A lot of times, we pack them as a snack to take to the pool with us – they are great but I like them best when the gardner steams them and then slathers them in butter.  Wow…heaven!

I love that our girls know where their food comes from.  The gardener is also a hunter and grilled out deer tenderloin the other night.  The twins were panting waiting for that to come off the grill and loved that they were eating something that Daddy brought home.  As he said, it doesn’t get more organic than that and I suppose he is right.  Our freezer is full from his deer hunts this fall and we are thankful for that.

But I  love this time of year.  It starts to get warm.

Each warm day when you get to open the windows for a bit – don’t you feel like you are in a laundry commercial or something?  You just take a deep breath and listen to the kids running around playing.  I love it.  Soon it will be full on migration and if you are birder you know what I’m talking about.  Warblers!  I can sit in my own backyard and see tons of warblers drop down in our trees on their journey.

This year, I will definately be out more with the baby.  Some of my old birding friends are not able to get out and walk like they used to but maybe we can at least do a trip up to Magee Marsh.

What’s that?  OK…again, if you bird, you know, this place has a little amazing boardwalk on the shoreline of the lake where ALL the birds drop before making the trip on across.  You can see EVERYTHING within arms reach.  Amazing colors, variety, and close views.  If you are looking for something fun to do this Spring, this is it!  Truly, they are always tons of families there and really, we don’t even need binoculars because everything is right there.  Check out their website – you’ll find out they have different fun events all Spring long.  What a great way to introduce your kids to some fun science concepts like migration.  You will NOT be disappointed by this place but beware…when it hits peak migration – the place is as packed as Disney World and there are people there from all over the US just to  watch the birds.  It’s pretty darn cool.

And with Spring, comes lots of new babies.  Which by the way – has anyone else noticed all the new babies around?!  Wow!  If I were just to go by my sales lately – I’d say last summer when gas prices were so high – there were a whole lot of people spending time at home and well, as a result, gas hike baby boom!

Bibs, bibs, bibs!  One of the teachers at my girls school asked about buying some bibs and I want to thank her for buying a few.  A few other teachers bought some things too which was fun to work with them on some designs for school bags and the like.  So – I have some new bibs in stock that I hope you might like as well.  I’ll have them loaded on etsy soon or you can email me if you are interested.  Just $12 each, fully reversible bib with a snap neck.  Can’t beat the cuteness of it!  Here’s a peek a at one of them…Heather Bailey Pop Garden bib

And since the garden has been planted, I’ve been thinking about all the creatures that visit our garden.  So, some new patterns coming along are “garden critters” that your girls and especially your boys will love!  My girls have already put dibs out on the design samples.  Trust me, super cute, super easy to sew!

I can’t wait to get these patterns all out.  Super easy patterns for beginner sewers.  Purses, kids stuff – you’ll love them.  All projects you can complete in under 3 hours.  Don’t sew?  START!  Just get a machine – and start by making something really simple to learn how to use your machine.  You will love being able to handcraft gifts and make things for your family and I promise you, EVERYONE CAN SEW.  Really!  You can!

A sunny Spring day just makes me happy and want to give things away!  So send me your comments or email me.  We will randomly choose one and send you a NEW BAG for Spring!  A hipster in a great fresh Spring home dec fabric by Amy Butler.  Isn’t this pretty?! Amy ButlerWe will take comments up to the end of March and send out your new bag the first week in April.  I love giveaways!

So get outside, go enjoy the birds, the flowers beginning to come up and take a hike!

:>) xo Trish

Contagious in Columbus

Ohio Statehouse

I bet you think I have fallen off the face of the earth, eh?  Almost.  Heavens…all 5 of us in the family got nasty colds and from there all heck broke loose.  I ended up with strep throat and was out, flat out, for 6 days and the twins ended up with pnuemonia.  Even the baby got an ear infection.  All is well now…we are on the mend, thankfully.

So much to write about I don’t think I possibly can get it all in!  First, before we all got sick…we played hookey!  Oh yeah!  I decided we needed to do our own little field trip and so I took the little ladies out of school to attend the dress rehearsal of Alice in Wonderland put on by BalletMet.  It was great!  Amazing effects – the girls loved it!  photo4In front of the NBC 4 on the Square studio downtown

 

Abe Lincoln?

 

We walked a bit around downtown.  The girls loved it – they even started yelling when they saw the NBC studios – our own little mini times square kind of affair.  So cool! After, we hopped across the street to our statehouse and wondered around.  How cool is it to just walk in your statehouse and meander any old place you want?  Too fun!  Wait?!  Is that Abe Lincoln?  No…just pea goofin off in the gift shop.  They have a bunch of programs planned for Abe’s 200th and of course, what celebration of Abe Lincoln would be complete without the hat?

We had lunch, and ice cream of course!  And the next day a fun day at the waterpark – Coco Key at the Cherry Valley Lodge.  Clean, nice – loads of fun and probably where we picked up our mega germs as we all were sick 2 days later.  Oh well!

Not much sewing or anything going on lately.  Some design work coming along -

 

Coco Key

Inside of Little Sophie

a sweet “Little Sophie” bag went to an expectant Mom recently.  I’m still taking individual custom orders if you are interested…let me know.

Little Sophie

I’ll try to be more current with my postings from now on…send me “good germ” vibes, would ya?